Vex

The review says 5 levels, but there are actually 10 levels. (1 tutorial, 8 acts, 1 credits level)

It seems pretty good overall, but there are a couple of things that annoyed me about it, which similar games like SkullFace or Super Meat Boy got right.

First, the controls feel awkward. Its hard to pin down, but I have a distinct feeling of clumsiness that isn't present in most platformers. Some of it is circumstantial. For instance, one checkpoint was next to a cliff you had to slide down. if you die, you are spawned above the checkpoint, and when you try to fall down the shaft, you hit the wall, and you don't stick to it because you haven't actually landed yet.

Another issue is that properly getting through some parts feels more dependent on what position all the obstacles happen to be in when you get there rather than how you deal with them. Part of it is the clumsiness, your inertia is too high to actually react to them, and you need to have momentuem to get through them. So, you can be happily running through a level, then suddenly a buzzsaw drops out of nowhere and hits you because your timing was unlucky. The time limit accentuates this, as it is encouraging you to take it quickly, rather than be overly careful, so if you try yo get the gold, your performance may be very variable based on your luck. This was something that SMB and Skullface managed to pull off really well, the flow of the level brought you to the obstacles with the correct timing. They reset when you restart, so your timing between runs is consistent.

The combination of these two factors means that the flow to the game is poor, and that is what really detracted from the experience.

I just can't load the game

I'm sorry but isn't this just a ripoff of Exit Path?

I'm the worst at platformers but actually am making some progress in this one, so Mystify may be correct...

If you hit "Quit Act" and aren't paying enough attention you just end up right back in the act you're trying to leave...